Ch. XXXVHL] gold of austkalia. 779 



any red sandstone of the Poikilitic group, which overlies the coal in 

 the southwest of England. 



There are lead veins in the Mendip hills which extend through the 

 mountain limestone into the Permian or Dolomitic conglomerate, and 

 others in Glamorganshire which enter the lias. Those worked near 

 Frome, in Somersetshire, have been traced into the Inferior Oolite. 

 In Bohemia, the rich veins of silver of Joachimsthal cut through basalt 

 containing olivine, which overlies tertiary lignite, in which are leaves 

 of dicotyledonous trees. This silver, therefore, is decidedly a tertiary 

 formation. In regard to the age of the gold of the Ural Mountains, 

 in Russia, which, like that of California, is obtained chiefly from aurifer- 

 ous alluvium, it occurs in veins of quartz in the schistose and granitic 

 rocks of that chain, and is supposed by MM. Murchison, De Yerneuil, 

 and Keyserling to be newer than the syenitic granite of the Ural — 

 perhaps of tertiary date. They observe, that no gold has yet been 

 found in the Permian conglomerates which lie at the base of the Ural 

 Mountains, although large quantities of iron and copper detritus are 

 mixed with the pebbles of those Permian strata. Hence it seems that 

 the Uralian quartz veins, containing gold and platinum, were not 

 formed, or- certainly not exposed to aqueous denudation, during the 

 Permian era. 



In the auriferous alluvium of Russia, California, and Australia, the 

 bones of extinct land-quadrupeds have been met with, those of the 

 mammoth being common in the gravel at the foot of the Ural Moun- 

 tains, Avhile in Australia they consist of huge marsupials, some of them 

 of the size of the rhinoceros and allied to the living wombat. They 

 belong to the genera Diprotodon and Nototherium of Professor Owen. 

 The gold of Northern Chili is associated in the mines of Los Hornos 

 with copper pyrites, in veins traversing the cretaceo-oolitic formations, 

 so called because its fossils have the character partly of the cretaceous 

 and partly of the oolitic fauna of Europe.* The gold found in the 

 United States, in the mountainous parts of Virginia, North and South 

 Carolina, and Georgia, occurs in metamorphic Silurian strata, as well 

 as in auriferous gravel derived from the same. 



Gold has now been detected in almost every kind of rock, in slate, 

 quartzite, sandstone, limestone, granite, and serpentine, both in veins 

 and in the rocks themselves at short distances from the veins. In 

 Australia it has been worked successfully not only in alluvium, but in 

 veinstones in the native rock, generally consisting of Silurian shales 

 and slates. It has been traced on that continent over more than nine 

 degrees of latitude (between the parallels of 30° and 39° S.), and over 

 twelve of longitude, and yielded in 1853 an annual supply equal, if 

 not superior, to that of California; nor is there any apparent prospect 

 of this supply diminishing, still less of the exhaustion of the gold-fields. 



It has been remarked by M. de Beaumont, that lead and some 



* Darwin's S. America, p. 209, &c. 



